Facilitating enabling drivers

An inveterate campaigner in favour of plain language is Caroline Jarrett, who recently argued on UsabilityNews that legalese on websites was unnecessary.

Simon Caulkin followed the subject up in Sunday's Observer management section, pointing out that companies using plain language in their communications - websites, annual reports, press releases - seem to perform better financially. The conclusion came out of a survey conducted by Clarity, which campaigns for plain legal language.

It's difficult to know which is the chicken and which the egg in this case: as Clarity speculates, firms that are failing may be likely to try to disguise bad news. At the bottom of Clarity's class comes Shell, Capita, Shire Pharmaceuticals and Gallaher.

Capita manages to convert 'absence management' for schools into 'providing clients with tailored and off-the-shelf solutions to a broad range of absence-related challenges'.